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Grannis to DEC Commissioner, Skirmish for his Seat Intensifies

By Edward-Isaac Dovere

Assembly Member Alexander “Pete” Grannis (D-Manhattan) is heading back to where he started.

Grannis was the agency’s compliance counsel nearly four decades ago, in the days just after it was first created by then-Gov. Nelson Rockefeller (R). He helped organize New York’s celebrations for the very first Earth Day in 1970, and has been a leading sponsor and author of many environmental bills in the Assembly.

“Here I have the opportunity 34 years later to close the circle, going back to an agency that I have worked with throughout my career in the Legislature,” he said.

He had applied for consideration as a possible replacement for State Comptroller Alan Hevesi (D), who resigned in a felony plea deal in December.

But before the finalists in that process were announced, he withdrew his name as Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) nominated him to be the state’s new commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), announced Jan. 25.

Grannis has been in the Assembly since 1975, and was elected to his 17th term last November by a wide margin.

Grannis Begins Crafting Agenda

Day One: Hire People

Topping the agenda for Assembly Member Alexander “Pete” Grannis if he is confirmed as the new Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner: hiring more people.

“Above everything else is to sort of put this agency together,” he said. “Obviously there are going to be people hired.”

During the 12 years that George Pataki (R) was governor, Grannis sees evidence of about 1000 people, or 25 percent of the staff, has either retired or been let go without being replaced.

“It’s quite stunning at the anger and the depth of the gutting of this agency,” he said, reflecting on the briefing materials he has been given since he accepted Spitzer’s nomination.

That means that if he becomes the new head of the agency, he will have to “reinvigorate” employees whom he thinks “have been frustrated over the last decade with the lack of attention to the quality and focus of their work,” he said.

Simultaneously, he will begin working on greenhouse gas regulations and other ways to address global warming, areas where he believes he has a strong ally in new Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D).

He will also focus on rebuilding dams. Only because snowfall in the northeast has been light this winter has this not led to greater flooding problems, he said.

Grannis said a new emphasis on enforcement and regulation will be a welcome change from the years under Pataki, whom he is generally praised even by enemies for his environmental record.

“On his land acquisition he has a legacy that I think he deserves extraordinary credit for,” Grannis said, referring to Pataki’s conservation efforts, which put over a million acres of state land under protection as New York parkland during his time as governor.

But, as to“the administration’s focus on enforcement and the day to day work of this agency,” Grannis said, Pataki’s legacy was “far different.”

- By Edward-Isaac Dovere

He is expected to be confirmed by the State Senate as commissioner, but will not likely resign his Assembly seat until after that happens. If he is not confirmed, he will remain in the Assembly. This means the seat, which represents the East Side roughly from 60th to 96th Street east of Third Avenue and Roosevelt Island, will likely go vacant sometime in February or early March. Though it could technically remain so until the regularly-scheduled Legislature elections in 2008, most assume that Spitzer will call a special election shortly after Grannis resigns. This would likely put the election sometime in March or early April.

In special elections, the Republican and Democratic parties each choose a nominee to run by County Committee election, rather than through an open primary. County Committees members are generally local activists put forward by their political clubs, with votes weighted according to the approximate number of people they represent.

Independent candidates can then petition their ways on the ballot.

Currently, only a handful of the approximately 200 County Committee members from the Assembly district who will make the decision are filled. The rest of the seats are vacant, but can be filled in the days leading up to the election through a special process which usually defers to the wishes of local political leaders.

The results of two special elections for Assembly seats last year demonstrate how unpredictable the process can be: when Steve Sanders resigned from his East Side Assembly seat, presumed County Committee favorite Steve Kaufman lost in a narrow upset to Sylvia Friedman for the Democratic nomination. Friedman easily won the special election, but less than five months later, she narrowly lost the Democratic primary for the regularly-scheduled elections to Brian Kavanagh, who now holds the seat. Meanwhile, on the West Side, establishment favorite Linda Rosenthal easily won the Democratic nomination in County Committee, glided to a special election win and faced only token opposition in the regularly-scheduled election in November.

Candidates have begun jockeying, including likely Democrats David Liston, Micah Kellner, Barry Klein, Tony Morenzi and Susan Chamlin. Eva Moskowitz and Gifford Miller, both former members of the City Council, were discussed as possibilities. Moskowitz has definitively passed on the race. Miller, whom most agree would have a free ride to the Democratic nomination if he wanted it, has not closed the door entirely.

Liston, 39, is the current chair of Community Board 8. He said he is “seriously considering” a run.

Grannis’ exit “leaves some big shoes in our community, and I believe I may be able to fill those shoes,” he said.

Kellner, 28, has worked for several elected officials, including Rep. Carolyn Maloney and is currently a community liaison for City Comptroller Bill Thompson and a state committee member from the 65th Assembly District.

“We’re in a watershed moment for the district and for Roosevelt Island, and there needs to be a strong hand who understands the issues and does the job well to make sure that the people in the 65th are taken care of,” he said, citing transportation, preservation, and affordable housing as main concerns.

Klein, 28, has been chief of staff to neighboring Assembly Member Jonathan Bing for the last two years. He recently completed a law degree at Fordham University.

Klein said Bing has encouraged him to run, but they have yet to have a conversation about an endorsement. He has put out calls to other elected officials and community leaders, and says that he believes his résumé, which also includes time on Wall Street, “certainly speaks to somebody who can fill this seat and do it well,” he said.

This, he believes could make him a dark horse possibility in the county committee process.

“Certainly I’m not the frontrunner, but depending on who jumps into the race, there’s certainly a decent chance for somebody like me to end up with the nomination,” he said.

Morenzi, 54, said he was waiting until Grannis’s confirmation hearings to make a decision.

“I am considering this at the moment. I’m trying to put everything into place that has to be put in place,” he said. “I want to make sure that when I make the final decision, that that is the final decision. I think it’s early for me at this moment to do that.”

The only word from an elected official so far seems to be from State Sen. Liz Krueger, whose district overlaps almost entirely with Grannis’. Krueger is “extremely excited” about the candidacy of Chamlin, who has been with Krueger since 2002, describes herself as being in her early sixties. She came to Krueger’s office after spending years working for Planned Parenthood and other organizations delivering services to women and to families.

She said the expected Assembly vacancy made sense for her.

“This was an opportunity that no one expected, but certainly it made me think that this was someone that I could take a step further into the process,” she said.

She added that a concern for the character of the East Side helped push her into the race.

“This neighborhood is changing tremendously, it is growing. I want to see that the neighborliness and the civility that has existed in this neighborhood is able to maintain itself, that we don’t lose the qualities that many of us moved here for,” she said.

Some Republican names are in the mix as well. Grannis has not had a challenger who posed a major threat in recent memory, though long-term incumbents rarely do. Of the Assembly districts in Manhattan, the 65th has the second-highest number of registered Republicans.

Among those in discussion: Nicholas Viest, who ran against Moskowitz in 2001, Joel Zinberg, who ran against City Council Member Jessica Lappin in 2005, and Ken Moltner, the former chair of Community Board 8 who ran for Civil Court in 1996.

Moltner, a 46 year-old litigation attorney, said he is “seriously considering” entering the race.

He said his long record of involvement with the community board and with other charitable organizations gives him “a lot of solid community credentials” which would enable him to win the nomination, appeal to voters and raise the amount of money necessary to wage a competitive race, which could be in the $200-$300,000 range.

Though there are currently no Republicans elected to the City Council, State Senate or Assembly from Manhattan, Moltner believes the GOP can be in serious contention for the seat.

“This is a special election,” he said. “It presents an opportunity.”

For his part, Grannis said he will probably back a candidate eventually, and—though he believes Morenzi will pass on the race—would probably back his chief of staff in the race.

Right now, “the remaining incumbents are all circling, looking at various candidates,” he said, insisting that he does not believe that he should get the final decision.

“There is a tendency after this long, long run of mine to view this as my seat. I was borrowing it for these last three decades and I fully understand that I don’t have the right to will it to somebody,” he said.

Comptroller Bid Behind Him, Grannis Still Weighs In

Pete Grannis did not know what Gov. Eliot Spitzer (D) wanted to talk about when he got the call asking for a meeting Jan. 23. But after he delivered his testimony to the independent screening panel recommending finalists for the new state comptroller that day, Grannis headed over to the office to be told that Spitzer wanted him to be the new commissioner of the Department of Environmental Conservation.

When Grannis said yes, he withdrew his name from consideration in the comptroller deliberations, surprising some. But when the panel announced Jan. 25 that it had selected no members of the Legislature as finalists, Grannis said he realized he had made a fortuitous decision.

“As it worked out,” he said, he was in “the right place at the right time.”

Still, reflecting on the process—which he made sure to call “open and fair”—he said he was surprised that none of his colleagues in state government were picked as finalists.

“I thought my colleagues did very, very credible jobs in sort of dispelling the myth that we were up to this responsibility,” he said. The panel was formed with the idea that it would pick “up to five” finalists at a time when five Assembly members were among the approximately 10 names actively in the mix (18 ultimately applied).

“Clearly the number of five was settled on anticipating that there would have to be some legislators,” Grannis said.

He said he expected that the Legislature would pick one of the finalists: Martha Stark, William Mulrow or Howard Weitzman, and that it would happen within a week.

However, he noted, “it was always clear to those of us who were doing this was that we were not bound by the recommendations of the panel.”

If, as some anticipate, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) pushes either Tom DiNapoli (D-Nassau), Richard Brodsky (D-Westchester) or Joseph Morrelle (D-Rochester), Grannis said he thought Spitzer would accept the decision.

“I don’t see him attacking one of those people,” Grannis said.

“I see him frustrated at us not living up to our end of the agreement. I just don’t see this war,” he added, referring to the dispute between Silver and Spitzer which has been described by some. “I don’t think there’ll be fallout.”

“If there’s anger, it ought to be directed at the three former comptrollers, all of whom came to the office with far less experience than we had,” he said.

Of one thing in this process, Grannis is certain: the office will be paid attention to only until the vacancy is filled. Once that is done, people will go back to not paying attention to who handles the hundreds of billions of dollars in pension fund investments and audits.

“As soon as he’s selected or she’s selected, it will go back to the obscurity that marked the office two three months ago,” he said.

- By Edward-Isaac Dovere